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Unredacted data from the complainant’s phone in Bruce Lehrmann’s Queensland rape case will be handed over to his legal team, and will form part of their bid to have the proceedings thrown out.
Lawyers for Lehrmann, who stands accused of raping a woman on a drug-fuelled night in 2021 at a Toowoomba nightclub, have told a court they were successful in their application to access a report into a download of the phone.
Bruce Lehrmann (right) and his lawyer Zali Burrows.Credit: Edwina Pickles / Wolter Peeters
Lehrmann, 30, was committed to stand trial last year, with the Crown’s case that the complainant had not consented to sex without a condom.
At his committal, the court heard the woman had testified that she told Lehrmann “stop what you are doing”, and he consoled her throughout, saying “it’s OK, it’s OK”.
Defence lawyer Zali Burrows said the data they were seeking to access was in a second Cellebrite report – a digital forensic report generated from a device’s data.
The legal team for the former federal Liberal Party staffer had previously made an application to have the case thrown out of court, with claims a police hard drive, which contained a full brief of evidence, had been destroyed.
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The officer in charge of the investigation lost the material stored on a personal hard drive because of a malfunction, Burrows said.
She had previously said there was then a second extraction of the phone’s data, and there were “some key words missing”. She then made an application to access the second report.
In a hearing on Monday in the Ipswich District Court, Burrows said they were waiting for the prosecution to provide a copy of the report, with redactions removed.
”We’re not sure at this stage how long that might take and then we will require a couple of weeks to consider this and then to incorporate our submissions in respect of the stay application,” Burrows said.
Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Caroline Marco said the material would be disclosed quickly.
She said the prosecution was communicating with another judge, who made the orders for the report to be disclosed, in regards to the time and date range of messages. She said the range had not entirely corresponded with their copy of the download.
Burrows said there was concern because there appeared to be various Cellebrite downloads of the phone, and whether the judge’s orders referred to the same version of the second phone download.
“Because the first download got lost on the missing hard drive,” Burrows said.
“So we’re not quite sure at this stage why there would be any discrepancies.”
Both prosecution and defence appeared by phone in the matter, with Lehrmann also listening in.
Judge Dennis Lynch adjourned the matter to December, with material expected to be disclosed by then.
He said he intended to give a hearing date for Lehrmann’s stay application next year.
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